The 9/26/96 issue of Forbes had this article about both Cytyc's
ThinPrep test and Diogene's HPV test:
Faulty tests
By Gloria Lau
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT Mindy Cimmino, now 30, may
owe her life to a refusal to take "maybe" for an answer.
In 1990 she visited her suburban Boston gynecologist for a routine Pap
smear, which screens for cervical cancer. The test was inconclusive.
Two more Pap tests over the next six months also came back without
definitive showings. Scared? You bet she was. "I thought something
was wrong and that they just weren't telling me," she recalls.
One of the things wrong was the 50-year-old Pap smear test itself.
During the test, a doctor smears cells scraped from a woman's cervix
onto a glass slide. Five percent of the 50 million tests performed every
year in the U.S. are inconclusive. It happens because blood and mucus
still clinging to the cervical cells swiped onto the glass slide block the
cytopathologist's view of the cells. Inflammation also makes cells hard
to see. Thus some of the 5,000 U.S. women who die every year from
cervical cancer are dying prematurely, because this is highly curable if
caught in time.
Cimmino couldn't live with the uncertainty. She went to a different
doctor and got a better test, in which the sample tissue is first washed
with methanol and other solvents. The solution is then put into a
machine that separates blood and mucus from the cells. The solution
also preserves the cells, keeping them hydrated so they can be used for
follow-up tests.
The new test, called ThinPrep, is marketed by Boxborough,
Mass.-based Cytyc Corp. Not all doctors use it, and not all insurance
companies will pay for it--it costs $40, against $20 for an old-style
Pap. But it is money well spent.
Cimmino's ThinPrep clearly showed that she had precancerous cells.
She had surgery and is fine now.
Her experience illustrates a common predicament in medicine: The
most advanced treatments often are delayed pending outcomes of the
most uncertain of tests. This is as true for HIV infection and breast
cancer as it is for cervical tumors. The good news is that new tests such
as ThinPrep are hurdling this obstacle, and often at reasonable costs.
But your doctor may not work with a laboratory that uses these new
tests to screen for disease. Perhaps your doctor isn't even aware of
them.
below, we list four other new tests worth knowing about. If your
insurer balks, pay for the exam yourself.
Papilloma. A new $50 test, made by Silver Spring, Md.-based
Digene Corp., can identify the presence of human papilloma virus by
measuring DNA levels. HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that often
spreads in spite of condoms. Some (but not all) types of it lead to most
cases of cervical cancer in women and, though rarely, can cause
scrotum, penile and anal cancer in men. The test identifies the strain and
helps your doctor decide whether or not to proceed with follow-up
treatment. The Food & Drug Administration authorized sale of the test
only last November.
The test will tell you if you're carrying the virus, but there's no way to
eliminate it. So what should you do?
Women: Consider getting the test every time you have an abnormal or
inconclusive Pap smear. If you are infected with the cancer-causing
type of the virus, you will get treatment to remove precancerous cells.
Men: If you find a bump or a sore in your genital area that doesn't heal,
get it checked. Doctors can at least treat the symptoms |
